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More than 585,000 visitors to Munch : Van Gogh in Van Gogh Museum

18 January 2016

The 'Munch : Van Gogh' exhibition has successfully finished with a record number of 585.620 visitors.

Axel Rüger, Director of the Van Gogh Museum: ‘It's been a huge success. We are extremely pleased that audiences from the Netherlands and abroad have shown such overwhelming interest in this exhibition. With its 1.9 million visitors, 2015 was a peak year for the Van Gogh Museum. Both the opening of the new glass entrance to the public and the Munch : Van Gogh exhibition attracted large numbers of people.’ Noticeably many Dutch people visited the Munch : Van Gogh exhibition: 163,000, to wit, 28% of the total number of visitors to the exhibition (this is twice the number of regular Dutch visitors in a similar period).

With the Munch : Van Gogh exhibition, the Van Gogh Museum brought together works by Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch on a large scale for the first time in history. The focus was the artistic and emotional overlap in the work of both artists. Munch : Van Gogh was a unique exhibition: more than 100 artworks were on display - circa 80 paintings and 30 works on paper. Iconic masterpieces from all over the world, hardly ever available on loan – among which Munch's The Scream and Van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhône – made up the very first exhibition in the reopened exhibition wing of the Van Gogh Museum.

Inspired by the Munch : Van Gogh exhibition, ten prominent cultural organizations in Amsterdam (including EYE Film Institute, the Amsterdam Theatre Group, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra) presented a much-visited Cultural Programme all over the city of Amsterdam. The popular Friday Nights in the Van Gogh Museum were the innovative epicentre of this Cultural Programme. The Munch : Van Gogh exhibition was on show from 25 September 2015 till 17 January 2016.

Substantial sponsor network

The Munch : Van Gogh exhibition was partly made possible by the support of the national government: on behalf of the Minister of Education, Culture and Science and the Finance Minister, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands granted the museum an indemnity guarantee. The Turing Foundation, the Blockbuster Fund, the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund and the Mondrian Fund generously sponsored the exhibition.

The Van Gogh Museum is presently preparing the Easy Virtue. Prostitution in French Art, 1850-1910 exhibition, which will be shown from 19 February until 19 June 2016.